Content Warning: This piece of creative nonfiction includes the use of a slur and its use reclaimed, as well as a brief scene involving the threat of violence. Act I My mother always said, borrowing from Lois McMaster…
“How do I language a collision arrived at through separation?”
Layli Long Soldier wrote that question, but I think about it often.
This piece was born out of a collision of parts. What became Act I started as an imitation travel guide, and what would become Act II began as a poem. At the time of their joining, I had become enamored with the idea of an essay that identified itself as a three-act play. But what I was compelled toward was languaging the separation I felt between my body and the land, my past and my present, the city and the country.
All stories are reconstructions of the events that happened, time is edited out, key scenes are sorted and selected. I am, in my heart, a poet, but the work resisted that container. My intent was to use the skills I had to craft this essay with attention to sound and imagery, but I also approached the genre with an irreverence learned from poetry. Time is jumbled, pressed together. Tenses are stranged—strained—and shifting. I read the piece aloud to trace the aural qualities of the diction and syntax. I dissected descriptions of place in search of anchors and immersion.
When I began to language this essay, I set out to counter the conventional narratives of gay flight. The movement of LGBTQ+ people from rural to urban areas. I had longed for the land while I was away, for the slow pace of small towns and the unpolished familiarity of their culture. “Freakshow” is not an essay about the growing dangers of being transgender in this country. It is not about life at the margins of society. It’s not even about being edged out of places you never wanted to leave. More than anything, this essay is a story about choices. I leave it with you because now, more than ever, choices must be made.
CHARLIE DIVINE (they/he) is a queer writer who grew up in the shrub steppe of rural Oregon. Their work is influenced by the intersection of history, art, and culture. He is a poetry reader at Chestnut Review. Find his writing in The Palouse Review, Beaver Magazine, and Vagabond City. Follow them on Instagram at @saturns.eye.
